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Monday, April 4, 2011

More about the reform of the Spanish electoral system

There have been different attempts of reforming the LOREG (Ley Orgánica del Régimen Electoral General). The last one was based on a report the State Council prepared for the Government. The State Council concluded that the electoral system is disproportioned and benefits the biggest parties and the least populated provinces, because it assures every province a minimum of two deputies in the Congress. The State Council proposed to enlarge the number of deputies from the present 350 to 400 and to assign only one deputy per province.

2 comments:

HiI think they won't reform the electoral system, because as you said Paqui, it benefits the biggest parties. They used the ignorance of the people to maintain their power. If many people protest this it can change, but as many people don't know about open lists, etc the big parties continue being the most powerful.I think that if the teachers teach this more seriously in some years it would change, but politic in young people is not very popular, and in this group, because I think until the majority of people known this things it won't change.Bye

The only way of changing this would be that the biggest parties didn´t get absolute majority and they needed the support of the smaller parties. The biggest parties won´t change this voluntarily, because this system gives them the majority of the representatives. We often forget that change is in people´s hands (remember the protests in Muslim countries). Unfortunately, the majority of the population in Spain agrees with the preponderance of the biggest parties and they prefer the stability of one-party governments, rather that several parties.

If you´re interested, the Constitution includes a possibility of presenting Public Initiatives (proposals of changes in laws made by the citizens). Citizens have to collect more than 500,000 signatures, so that their initiatives can be debated in the Parliament. This doesn´t assure that their proposals would be taken into account, but we have the opportunity of expressing our opinions. This is reflected in article 87, section 3

http://www.servat.unibe.ch/icl/sp00000_.html#A087_

The only way of changing things is becoming active, in the traditional parties or in new ones.